If Farmer Boy Had To Buy School Lunch

In the elementary school where I taught in Denver, the school, oddly, lacked a full kitchen. With most of the school needing school lunch and no facilities to actually cook, the district put bids out to—weren’t the 90’s awesome!—fast food chains! We had Pizza Hut one day, Taco Bell two days a week, and pouches of fried nuggety matter that came off a truck and into a microwave the other days. (On Martin Luther King, Jr,  Day, in a hideously confused gesture of respect, the central kitchen served, and I am not making this up, watermelon and fried chicken. ) 

Around the same time, soda companies had figured out how to break into the public school market by offering $10,000 cash for every vending machine placed in a  school. Our district decreed each school would get two. 

When the kids saw the Pepsi machines they went crazy. “All right!” “Yes!” “We get to have pop at school now—that’s so awesome!” And every day, despite the fact that they were all on free and reduced lunch,  nearly every kid showed up to school with $2.50 to purchase an 18 oz bottle of pop.  Since these  bottles were really too big for the kids to finish in their approximately 9.5 minute lunch period, the bottles of soda ended up all over the playground, spilled in the classroom, or used as weapons on the bus. This drove all the teachers (not to mention the bus drivers!) insane--we cursed the Pepsi corporation, the parents giving into peer pressure and shelling out precious cash every day,  and the fools in the downtown Administration building who had sold us out like this, every day.

Seeing my students swagger around with their damn Pepsi bottles made me think of a scene from Farmer Boy. When Almanzo Wilder--Laura's future husband-- was about eight, he went to the Independence Day celebration in Malone, NY, with his family. At the parade, his cousin Frank, a “town boy”, taunts Almanzo because he doesn’t have a nickel to buy lemonade. Knowing his father will disapprove, but determined to show up his nemesis cousin, Almanzo gathers up all his nerve and fearfully asks his father for a nickel to buy lemonade. To his surprise, his father holds up a half dollar:

“Almanzo, do you know what this is?”

“Half a dollar.”

“Yes, but do you know what half a dollar is?”

Almanzo didn’t know that it was anything but half a dollar.

“It’s work, son….You know how to raise potatoes?” 

“Yes.”

“Say you have a seed potato in the spring—what do you do with it?” 

“You cut it up….Then you harrow—first you manure the field, then plow it. Then you harrow, and mark the ground. And plant the potatoes, and plow them, and hoe them. You plow them and hoe them twice….Then you dig them up and put them down cellar.”

“Yes…and come spring, you load them up and haul them here to Malone, and you sell them. And if you get a good price, son, how much do you get to show for all that work? How much to you get for a half a bushel of potatoes?”

“Half a dollar,” said Almanzo.

“Yes,” said Father.”That’s what’s in this half dollar, Almanzo. The work that raised half a bushel of potatoes is in it.”

….Frank asked Almanzo: “Where’s the nickel?”

“He didn’t give me a nickel,” said Almanzo.

“Yah, yah! I told yiou he wouldn’t! I told you so!”

“He gave me half a dollar,” said Almanzo…. “I’m going to look around, and buy me a good little suckling pig.”

Which brings me to my next post: where children think meat comes from. 

Beef By-Products and You!

When I taught elementary school in Denver, the second grade took a field trip to the Great National Western Stock Show every year. (Coming from New England, I had never heard of the Great National Western Stock Show.) Before the field trip, two cowboys came to our classroom to give a presentation: Beef By-Products and You! They brought a large fold-out display of the thousands of places where beef by-products end up--petroleum! Vinyl! Some kinds of rubber! (Sorry, vegans!) The cowboy chuckled to the kids, "And I bet y'all thought it was all turned into dog food!"

The last thing the cowboy said was, "If you get lost at the Great National Western Stock Show--find a cowboy." I thought, God forbid we lose a kid at the Great National Western Stock Show! They will be carted off and made into petroleum, or vinyl, or dog food!

A week later we were off to the Stock Show. This was comprised of a convention center, covered rodeo rings, and several auditoriums all attached to each other, under an overpass, in a bleak, windy, no-man's land part of town. Unfortunately, the bus drivers dropped our entire group--127 kids, four teachers, twenty parent chaperones and assorted siblings--at the back door of the Great National Western Stock Show,  where  they had no idea what to do with us. The cowboy at the back door told me we would have to walk five blocks around to the front door.  All of us teachers--eyeing the wind howling through the dusty alleys around the convention center--said this was not happening--so we entered the bowels of the Great Western National Stock Show, and set off.

The cowboy was right: we would have been much better off hiking to the front door, where we would have been given maps, name tags, and a guide. After over an hour of walking past displays of commercial grain producers, representatives from slaughterhouses, combine dealers, and a slide presentation of common diseases of goats ("Yo Miss Timmons, what up with that goat?"), we finally found a section resembling a petting zoo. (A sign on one pen said "We will soon be hamburger!") Along the way, we lost the other three classes. This was before cell phones; we had no choice but to just meet back at the bus at 2:30.

By the now my kids were hungry, and we looked around for a place to sit.  A good half hour later--after some horrifying glimpses of modern de-worming techniques for sheep--we gave up on finding the picnic area and sat in some empty bleachers to eat. That is when one of my chaperones came up to me and announced that she had lost one of her four year old twins. She did even know how long he had been missing, because her older son had gripped her hand in the crowd and she assumed it was his younger brother.

 I thought I might possibly throw up in front of my entire class.

The kids sensed an emergency. They started to get restless and throw food at one another. One kid complained, "This whole field trip stinks real bad, Miss Timmons!"Another said, "That's because this is where they turn all them cows into vinyl, dummy!"

The mom of the missing child stared at me in mute panic.
"Don't worry," I said with a big smile, "We'll find him. " She smiled back, "I know. The Lord will take care of him." I stood up and clapped hands at the kids, "Lunch is over--we have to find the back door again--and go back exactly the way we came!"

Many groans from the kids. "I ain't looking at that nasty goat again!" "The tractors is so boring!" "It smelled so bad when we walked by the pigs!"

"Exactly the way we came!" I yelled over the protests.  "And everyone--" I added, "Look around for Jonah!" I held up the non-missing twin. "He looks exactly like this!"

The kids looked mildly interested at this. A few of the girls with younger siblings looked shocked. I met their eyes -don't freak out!--and they got the message. They all started poking each other, whispering among themselves, and looking at the missing boy's brothers with  pity.

We hiked, all forty of us, back past the penned animals, the bales of hay, the bovine pharmaceutical displays, the Today's Bean Farmer charity raffle table, the barbed-wire demonstrations.   We looked in bathrooms, under bleachers, in the food court--and in the lost and found child booth, where, to my great surprise,  we found a kid from another second grade class! He flung himself on me, hysterically crying. I told the cowboys we had lost a four year old and showed them his brother. They made an announcement over the loudspeaker--but I doubted anyone could hear it.  A minute the other  lost kid's teacher, who had been frantically trying to reach the lost and found, met up with us, her face white, her hands on her heart.

"Thank god," she whispered, "His field trip buddy left him in the bathroom! I thought I was going to die!"

"I'm still missing a sibling!" I hissed back. "He looks just like that!"  With bright smiles pasted on our faces, we went in opposite directions to keep searching.

Nearly two hours had passed. It was almost time to get on the bus. I ran through alternatives in my head: should I send my kids back on the bus with the other teachers and stay with the parent? Should we hold the buses? Should I call the principal? The police? Just was we turned the corner in sight of the back door, we heard a cry--there was our missing four-year-old, holding the hand of an enormous, disgruntled looking cowboy.  He was not a cheerful, turquoise-hatted employee of the Stock Show, but an actual cowboy, who looked like he had slept in his trailer after driving all the way from Wyoming.

The little boy, Noah, was smiling, holding tight to the cowboy's hand. The twin's mother knelt in front of him, gasping,"Noah, what happened to you?"

"I lost your hand, Mom, but Adam"--the oldest brother--"told me if I got lost, to just find a cowboy!"

At this the cowboy  grunted: "He ain't let go my hand for two hours."

Followed by, "I don't even work here!"

We thanked him so many times he got embarrassed. And this is why I love the West: the cowboy actually tipped his hat, and strode off.

The kids were all staring, "Can we go home now?"

"Now," I said, "We can go home."

If Farmer Boy's Dad Had to Attend the Field Trip Meeting

When we lived in the Boston suburbs, the kids took a field trip in 3rd grade  to the town nature preserve. This was about two miles form the school.  Before the field trip, parents had to attend a  orientation, at which the science teacher outlined the plan for the day:  a three-hour ramble over well-worn paths, with observations of habitat and plant life. She asked if there were any questions.  

One dad stood up and announced, “We are  very concerned about the risk of sun stroke on this field trip. We don’t like Taylor to be out in the sun too long.” 

This was followed by,  

“Are the children going to be exposed any poison ivy on this field trip?” 

“Are there going to be any poisonous mushrooms?” 

“What is the plan for mosquitoes?” 

“Are the kids going to be walking though an area with the ticks which carry Lyme disease?”

And my favorite: “What about fisher cats?”

The science teacher—who apparently, had heard all this before— assured the parents that the kids would be steered away from poison ivy, mushrooms, and toxic exposure to the sun; would be wearing whatever non-toxic, gluten-free, organic insect repellent they brought with them, as required; would be checked for ticks, and would stop and tweet fisher-cat repelling whistles every four minutes. (Just kidding about the last part. What she really said was, Well, fishers are native to this area, but no, we won’t see one, as they are a) nocturnal and b) likely to be scared away by a group of  a hundred and twenty third graders on a field trip.) 

I was starting to wonder if any of these people ever actually went outside. 

Farmer Boys’ parents, needless to say, had a different approach to the dangers of nature. In Chapter VI of Farmer Boy, Almanzo went along with his father to watch ice being cut out of the river:  

Almanzo ran to the edge of the hole, watching the saw. Suddenly, right on the edge, he slipped. He felt himself falling headlong into the dark water. He knew he would sink and be drawn under the solid ice. The swift current would pull him under the ice, where nobody could find him. He’d drown, held down by the ice in the dark.  French Joe grabbed him just in time…..he felt a terrific crash and then he was lying on his stomach on the good, solid ice. He got to his feet. Father was coming, running.

Father stood over him, big and terrible.

“You ought to have to worst whipping of your life,” Father said.

“Yes, Father,” Almanzo said. He knew it. He knew he should be more careful. A boy nine years old is too big to do foolish things because he doesn’t stop to think.  Almanzo knew, and felt ashamed.

If Almanzo’s father could see nine-year-olds today—who, apparently, do not  have enough experience being outside the house to avoid poison ivy, sunstroke, mushrooms, or ticks, and whose parents think they are at risk of being attacked by elusive nocturnal animals in broad daylight—well, it’s a good thing he can’t see it. 

We Are All Total Losers Compared to #Farmer Boy          

I am obsessed with  "Farmer Boy"--Laura Ingall's Wilder's book about her husband Almanzo's childhood in upstate New York.  (Spoiler alert: it never explains where  they got the name "Almanzo"--possibly, there is a missing chapter about a traveling circus?) This book has me convinced that our culture is totally, completely going down the tubes. Whenever I am feeling really inadequate—because I hate cooking and my kids have played way to many video games and I just can’t bring myself to mop up muddy dog footprints again, I think about Farmer Boy’s mom, and feel worse. For instance: this is what I make for dinner--

Open jar of Ragu
Open package of pre-cooked chicken sausage
Open bag of frozen gnocchi
Make all of this stuff hot and combine. 
Congratulate myself that I snuck an entire raw onion into the sauce! This counts as a vegetable. 
Add cheese.
Serve. 

This is how my son eats:

He approaches stove with trepidation. From his demeanor, you would think he is routinely held down and force-fed haggis, or wichity grubs. In fact, he is on a rotation of about six foods, none with vegetables, spices, sinister chunks, or more than 3 ingredients.  He eats each of these foods only after coating them exhaustively in parmesan cheese. (In fact, the food is only a vessel by which parmesan cheese can be more efficiently ingested; much like the relationship between toast:cinnamon sugar, or waffles:syrup.) He peeks in saucepan. Sees that the gnocchi is bathed in sauce. Distorts face. (I close my eyes, count to ten, and tries not to think about wine.)  I dish up a plate. Boy coats food with so much parmesan cheese it looks a lot the front lawn, which is frozen under two feet of snow. Boy delicately picks parmesan cheese off the top of the food with one tine of his fork and proceeds to eat parmesan cheese, one granule at a time. 

This is what Farmer Boy’s mom makes the family of six, plus a visiting teacher, for dinner:

There were slabs of tempting cheese, there was a plate of quivering headcheese, there were glass dishes of jams and jellies and preserves, and a tall pitcher of milk, and a steaming pan of baked beans with a crisp bit of fat pork in the crumbling brown crust….and a big willow-ware platter full of sizzling ham. 

This is how Almanzo ate:

He ate the sweet, mellow baked beans. He ate the bit of salt pork that melted like cream in his mouth. He ate mealy boiled potatoes with brown ham-gravy….He demolished a tall heap of mashed turnips, and a hill of stewed yellow pumpkin. He ate plum preserves, and strawberry jam, and grape jelly, and spiced watermelon-rind pickles. Slowly he ate a large piece of pumpkin pie. 

And, I’ll have you know, Farmer’s boy’s mom made all of that from scratch—including the head cheese, and the watermelon rind pickles—with no electricity, running water, or refrigeration. She did it all by lantern light!  
I wonder where I can buy some headcheese. 

(Ok, I just Googled "Almanzo." According to thinkbabynames.com, in one of the Little House Books, Almanzo told Laura his name was passed down from an ancestors in England whose life had been saved in the Crusaded by an ancestor named Al Mansour! Well, how about that!) 

#Mommy Fashion


For some reason I am getting Marie Claire magazine. I loved this magazine when I was like, 22.  This month I enjoyed the article on women entrepreneurs in Syrian refugee camps. I also found the fashion tips incredibly useful, because now I finally know what to pair with my son's soccer shorts!

This next photo was a little more challenging for me, as, sadly, I got rid of all my legwarmers--it seems so foolish now!--in about 1984.  

And this last suggestion for, well, all can say is OMG--my 13 year old son will be SO psyched when I wear THIS to his freshman class orientation!! I had been wondering what to pair my  transparent Parental Advisory space smock with!! #momissohip

Now if I could just find shoes like that in New Hampshire!!!

Worst Snow Day Ever!

That reminds me of our all-time, flat-out, hands down worst snow day ever! 

Actually, there was no snow--we were living in Oklahoma--it was an ice storm.

At 8 am the morning of the storm, a neighbor called to inform me that my older son was ice skating down the middle of the street. Complete with helmet and hockey stick (and least he put on his helmet!).  For people in Norman, Oklahoma, this was kind of like seeing aliens land in in the parking lot of Sonic. Shocked drivers were gliding past him, their faces transfixed in horror. I ran to the front door and yelled for Palmer to get out of the street right now! He waved "Oh, hi, Mom!" and happily skated right onto the front walkway and up to the door. I told him that under no circumstances could he leave the back yard!

An hour later, while I was getting both kids into the tub, the glass shower door shot back and shattered into a million tiny pieces of safety-glass jigsaw. I hustled the kids out of the bathroom and spent 45 minutes cleaning up every tiny shard of glass--then I hauled the jagged, glass-dribbling doorframe out to the utility area behind the garage, where I stuck it behind the trash cans.

Meanwhile, I had noticed that the cat wasn't looking so hot--he'd been in another fight with the white cat ("Bad Cat") who lived behind us and had a nasty abscess on his leg. I made him a vet appointment for later on that day and made a mental note to keep him inside.

After I finished vacuuming the carpet outside the bathroom for stray glass shards, I came in the living room to check on the boys, and there was Palmer, ice skating again--this time, in the back yard as requested, but with the broken shower door draped around his neck! As he skated around, merrily talking to himself about Sponge Bob, little fragments of glass rained onto the ice.

I threw open the door and yelled at Palmer to stop right there (this was something I said a lot). He kept skating and just looked at me, completely mystified. I carefully slid across the ice in my socks, lifted the door frame off his shoulders, and brushed a dozen shards of glass out of  his hair.

"Can you please stay out of the utility area?" I said with gritted teeth. As far as I knew, Palmer had never even noticed the utility area--why he chosen this day to go in there are liberate the door so he could skate around with it on his head was beyond me (but then again, after seven years with this child, I was not actually that surprised).

I hauled the door back to the utility area and locked it. Then I suddenly remembered--the cat. I yelled back at the house, "Boys! Quick--shut the door!"

Both boys stood in the open door and stared at me. The cat hovered behind them.
"What door?" they yelled back. "Which door do you want us to close?"

Before I could reply, Palmer said importantly: "Mac, go close the garage door."  As Mac dutifully ran off to close the garage door, I yelled, "NO! THAT DOOR! THE ONE YOU'RE STANDING IN! YOU'RE GOING TO LET THE--"

And the cat bolted out from behind Palmer and took off.

"Oh my god," I gritted my teeth again (in a few years, and I am not kidding, I would need a root canal for child-induced teeth grinding.)  Behind me, the garage door creaked open, since Mac had hit the button without noticing whether it was open or closed. It was just as well--I  ran into the garage, grabbed my boots, and stepped back onto the ice to go after the cat. The ice was so lethal all I could do was shuffle a few inches at a time (in retrospect, I should have asked Palmer to go after the cat in his skates!).

The cat staggered awkwardly around the corner of the house. I made my  way after him in the slowest possible, not-picking-my-feet-up-trying-not-to-crack-my-head-open ice walk. It was like an extreme super-slow-mo chase scene.  The cat, who was surprisingly fast despite his infected leg and the ice, gimped toward the front door and darted behind the holly bush. I scootched up to the holly bush, reached for the cat, and then, wham--my feet went out from under me and I landed on the holly bush--now a razor-sharp frozen death shrub.

The boys, intrigued by my agonizing walk around the house, chose that moment to open the from door.

"Mom, what are you doing?"

"Grab the CAT!" I yelled. They grabbed him. I picked myself up--OMG, ow!--I had landed really hard on my hip, and was bleeding from several bloody scratches from the hollycicles. I hobbled back inside.

We got the cat to the vet.

Seven months and a very large amount of money later,  I had spine surgery for the herniated discs which had dislodged in that fall on the ice.

The good news is, the cat was fine.

Snow Day

Second snow day in a row!

The first snow day is stay at home all day, force the kids out to go sledding instead of playing Minecraft for 8 hours,  make brownies,  and avoid making eye contact with the dog. The second day is--OMG! I have to get out of the house!

I force myself to think about Ma Ingalls in "On The Banks of Plum Creek. "  Here I am with central heat, a Jacuzzi and Netflix streaming, whining about cabin fever--and there was Ma, with dirt walls, a Bible, and no running water. They lived in a hole (Laura referred to as their snug little home or something) dug out of a riverbank in South Dakota (and what's more, her husband was home all day every day!) Despite the cheery gingham curtains, the little china shepherdess, and the all-engrossing  fun of penmanship practice--it must have gotten tedious, even for the amazing Ma.  Of course they were probably too preoccupied with "not freezing or starving to death" to worry about being bored--it probably took half their time just to keep the fire going and melt enough snow to make porridge. Or Maybe Laura just conveniently blocked out the times when Ma went out to the frozen outhouse and screamed in desperation.